I subscribe to a ton of blogs (I’ve listed them below if you are interested) and read them daily. It’s something that I really enjoy as it keeps me up to date with the latest technology and motivates me to be better in business.

I’m constantly surprised of how willing most bloggers are to connect with their readers. In the past few weeks I’ve connected with Bob Walsh (author of The Web Startup Success Guide, and co-hosts the Startup Success Podcast), Brad Feld (managing director at Foundry Group) and Derek Sivers (founder of CD Baby).

Late last night I jumped onto Bob Walsh’s blog to re-read an article he had previously written about finding developers. All of a sudden Bob’s live chat popped up and prompted me to ask a question. So I did. Bob and I ended up going back and forth for the next 20 minutes talking about PHP versus Ruby on Rails, the startup scene in Southern California and then we got into what Bob was working on.

I was excited to hear that Bob was working on a book WordPress for Startups. Other than HTML and CSS programming, I’m fairly non-technical. Yet, I’ve created a number of blogs for friends and family (including this VCorBust). I feel that WordPress for Startups will come with warm reception from the startup community.

Bob also directed me to a site he is currently working on FreelancerCashFlow, a website that helps freelancers manage their cashflow.  Launch coming soon!

It’s just so great to see that the startup community is such an active and helpful one. No one is out to steal your idea, or rip you off. Everyone’s in the game because of the enjoyment of the process rather than the goal of making it rich (although making it rich is a healthy byproduct of a successful startup).

If you’re an entrepreneur, interested in starting a business or want to learn programming, I encourage you to listen to Bob’s podcast The Startup Success, or chat with Bob on his website.

And as promised, here are the Blog’s I subscribe to:

47 Hats, A Reminder, A VC, Ben’s Blog, Boths Sides of the Table, Brent Csutoras, Entrepreneur, Felds Thoughts, For Entrepreneurs, Get Elastic, Hot Property – Business Week, How to Change The World, Inc.com, Mixergy,  OnStartups, Quick Sprout, Reality Check with Diana Olick, Seth’s Blog, Tech Crunch, This is Going to Be Big, VC Deal Lawyer, VCA Online, Derek Sivers.

I recently read a great book entitled The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clay Christensen. This book isn’t new, but it is new to me, yet I see many of the authors principles strongly embedded within business today.

Within the book, Professor Christensen describes “disruptive technology” as:

“An innovation that is disruptive allows a whole new population of consumers access to a product or service that was historically only accessible to consumers with a lot of money or a lot of skill.”

Anyone familiar with Professor Christensen’s work will quickly recognize the same causal mechanism at the heart of the Innovator’s Dilemma: the pursuit of profit. Even professional managers — doing all the right things and following all the best advice — lead their companies all the way to the top of their markets in that pursuit… only to fall straight off the edge of a cliff after getting there.

Which is exactly what had happened to Apple. A string of professional managers had led the company straight off the edge of that cliff. The fall had almost killed the company. It had 90 days working capital on hand when he took over — in other words, Apple was only three months away from bankruptcy.

If you want to learn more about Professor Christensen’s work, I recommend reading Mark Suster’s post on the subject.

One last thing. I don’t recommend the audio version. The reader presents the book like a trailer to an action movie, making it very difficult to follow.

For me, simple ideas that solve a necessity are the most exciting of ideas.

If you are on the run and need to sign a document. Or, even if you are like me and don’t like wasting paper (or don’t have access to a printer and scanner), SignNow allows you to sign a document on the go.

E-signatures is by no means a new concept. But most of the other services like RighSignature, Docusign and Echosign are all great e-signature services. But they are focused on enterprise users and often too complicated for a consumer and small business owner’s needs.

With SignNow, the website is a very simple, easy to use, convenient and a great time saver…. and it’s free! All you have to do is sign up, upload or draw your signature (the online drawing tool doesn’t quite come out like your original signature) and then anytime you need to sign a document you open it, point to where you would like to drop in your signature, bada bing bada boom, you’re in business!  I don’t know if I would be using the service to complete a will or mortgage documents, but it’s a great tool for signing letters and authorizing business documents. I wonder if they used their own service to execute their funding short form?

SignNow also lets you store documents. No doubt in the future this will lead to a premium ‘paid’ service. But for now their service is free. Give it a try!

The past few years have presented me with many challenges. Moving to another country has been at the top of the list and I whole heartedly admit that I haven’t been my positive self for some time. What has slowed me down hasn’t been the physical challenge of moving to another country. No, what has slowed me down is my attitude. I’ve made many excuses not to succeed. My whole outlook on life has been negative and two weeks ago I decided I need to change. I’d like to share with you the steps I’m taking to enforce change.

Appreciate the Good Things in Life

I fell into the trap of wanting people to appreciate me. It’s an addictive drug that one needs to avoid. Instead I now wake up each morning and appreciate what’s in front of me.

As I write this post, I’m sitting in Vail, Colorado with sunny skies, great skiing conditions and I’m sharing the holiday with great friends. How could you not appreciate such a beautiful place.

Im in a relationship with the most beautiful person I have ever met. She inspires me to be a  better person, is truly my best friend, and is responsible for kicking my butt into gear. I have fallen victim to not always appreciating her, which is not fair to either of us. Making her feel special enriches our relationship and makes me a happier person.

I’ve previously expressed that I don’t like living in the States. That’s just an excuse I’ve used to remain in a state of unhappiness. I actually like living in the country. Moving to Huntington Beach has opened my eyes to a great culture, weather and despite the complaints everyone has about doing business in California, it’s a fantastic place for anentrepreneur.

Appreciating the good things in my life quickly turns a sour mood into a positive one.

Improve Your Social Skills

So much of the happiness in my life has come from the conversations I’ve had with friends and family. Why I stopped searching for rich conversations I’ll never understand. Im just happy that I do still appreciate good conversation and now seek it out whenever I can. It’s amazing what you can learn about someone by asking them very simple questions like: where did you grow up, what’s your favorite sport etc.

As you focus your attention more outward, toward other people the less self conceous you become about yourself. Also, showing an interest in everyone you encounter can lead to some new and exciting business relationships, not to mention friendships.

Focus on What You Want, Not What You Don’t Have

This has been one of my biggest downfalls. I’ve fallen into the trap of focusing on the money I don’t have, the businesses that haven’t flourished, the properties I’ve lost money on. I now focus on what I want out of life, in business, friendships and my relationship.

If you focus on the negative, you’ll be blinded to opportunities. On the other hand, if you express a positive attitude whilst focusing on the things you want in life, opportunities will pop out at you.

Think of it this way: if you have ever bought a car, be it a white Toyota, when you are thinking about buying that car you tend to see a lot of white Toyota’s. If you focus your attention on looking for a new job in realestate, you will notice articles on real estate and friends will mention contacts they have in the industry.

By focusing on what I want out of life I open my eyes to new and exciting oportunities. I also have less available time in the day for those negative thoughts to surface.

Take Action

I used to be brilliant at taking action. I’ve tracked down CEOs of major corporations, billionaire real estate investors, and certain real estate guru’s just to invite them for an informal chat over coffee.

Knowing how to push the ‘take action’ button takes guts, confidence and a strong belief in yourself. To do this you need a positive attitude. How else can you sell yourself in business and in life?

Procrastination is of course a big problem when trying to take action.

With a positive attitude I’m better equiped to take action. Even onthose off days I’m forcing myself to take action and have felt better for it EVERY time.

This blog post by Seth Godin is worth re-printing in full.

The pain of a lousy boss, of careless mistakes, of insufficient credit. The pain of instability, of bullying, of inadequate tools. The pain of poor cash flow, corrosive feedback and work that isn’t worthy of you.

Pain is part of work. And it leads to two mistakes.

The notion that you can trade your way out of pain.

“If I just get a little bigger, a little more famous, a little richer–then the pain will go away.”

This notion creates a cycle of dissatisfaction, an unwillingness to stick it out. There’s always a pain-free gig right around the corner, so screw this, let’s go try that.

The truth is that pain is everywhere, in every project and in every relationship and in every job. Wandering from one to another merely wastes your energy.

The other choice, though, is:

Embracing your current pain and avoiding newer, unknown pains.

This is precisely the opposite mistake. This leads to paralysis. Falling in love with the pain you’ve got as a way of avoiding unknown future pains gets you stuck, wasting your potential.

As usual, when confronted with two obvious choices, it’s the third choice that pays.

Today I found a great article on board leadership: “Boards: The Right Person To Lead One”.

Within the article, the author states “If you’re constructing an advisory board for your business, you need to be clear about its role and judicious in the choice and range of directors. But there’s no decision more important than who leads your meetings.

The author is spot on here. Too many company founders want to do it all. Most founders are too close to their product; too sensitive to make the difficult decisions. As a founder you should be involved in the big decision and that means being a part of the discussion, not the person running the meeting. The chair of the meeting needs to be passive; someone that steers the meeting in the right direction and gets the most out of the discussion. They can’t be the focal point.

If you’re like me, you’re receiving dozens of emails on a daily basis, among those are subscription based emails. Most of the time I take the effort to unsubscribe to those annoying emails, but many are set up to discourage you from unsubscribing. What’s more, I’m constantly sifting through emails trying to rank them from important to ‘read another day’.

OtherInbox is a great solution for sorting your important emails and unsubscribing from those you don’t want to recieve anymore.

OtherInbox’s Automatic Organizer cleans up your inbox by putting receipts, newsletters, and Facebook messages into folders. Every morning you get a daily summary to make sure that you don’t miss anything important. When you get a shipping notice, it automatically shows up on your calendar in Outlook or Google Calendar.

And what about those annoying advertising emails? OtherInbox have created the Unsubscribe Folder in Organizer. Just drop the email in the folder and OtherInbox will do the unsubscribing work for you.